With extremely rare exceptions, the one meal each week that doesn’t come from our kitchen is Tuesday night’s Dominos pizza. The entire family loves it and there are usually enough leftovers for the next day’s lunch. The only thing that would make the experience perfect would be if the pick-up was a little less, umm, awkward. It is the exact opposite of what I experience in the small grocery beside our nearest Dominos. When I enter the non-chain grocery, someone always smiles and says hello. Several of the cashiers know me by name and when they banter with the baggers, they genuinely seem to be be friends with their co-workers. The butcher recognizes Evan and holds the bell low enough for Evan to ring it as he runs past the meat counter with his miniature shopping cart. The managers know the regular customers and are never seen being anything but kind and supportive of the store employees. The cashiers’ feet may hurt from standing all day and the baggers may have been abused by a cranky customer, but it never shows. It is like a little oasis for happy people and I love going to that grocery. Maybe it is just too hot, stressful and dangerous working in a pizza delivery restaurant to be happy and we’re even considering get one of those wood fired pizza ovens go to this grocery get the ingredients and make our own pizza at home. I don’t know.

A few weeks ago, Dominos bought our family’s and several additional teenagers‘ the new American Legends pizzas, in exchange for, well, nothing. They paid for the pizzas. We ate them and that was the end of that. I CHOOSE to make a few comments about the pizzas that we tried. Because I am an eccentric southerner aka picky eater, none of our pizzas had onions or peppers. I didn’t order the Pacific Veggie Pizza, because it looked like the peppers were the fun part of it and I didn’t think anyone would eat it. Well, Doug would eat it, but he doesn’t need an entire pizza to himself. We also decided against the Fiery Hawaiian Pizza since removing the onions and peppers made it nearly identical to another pizza. Instead, I got Sarah a Three Cheese Mac-n-Cheese Breadbowl. I find the idea of mac ‘n’ cheese pizza too horrible to even taste it, but Sarah and Amy insist that it is “yummy.” I’ll just take their word for it.

The Honolulu Hawaiian Pizza and Buffalo Chicken Pizzas were good. Our family had already made the Philly Cheese Steak Pizza a part of regular weekly order, so we knew that it was extra yummy. The Cali Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza was a little bland, but I think it could easily be adjusted with an additional ingredient or two. The biggest surprise for everyone was the Memphis BBQ Chicken Pizza. Admittedly, I do have a soft spot for Memphis in general, but the BBQ pizza is sweet and delicious. The only-eats-cheese-pizza child devoured two pieces of the BBQ pizza. The teen guests unanimously rated the BBQ as their favorite and Doug and I liked it so much that it is now part of our regular Tuesday order.

A quickie crust review: Everyone loves the cheddar crust. Everyone except the small people love the thin crust. Everyone likes the regular and parmesan crusts. The teenagers like the deep dish crust. The Brooklyn and provolone crusts are not popular.

Thank you for dinner Dominos!